TransferSummit is will be underway very soon. We have a couple of live bloggers at the event so keep an eye on their reports.
We are using the #TS10 hashtag for delegates to use in tweets, blogs, photos etc.
Archive for June, 2010
We are only two days away from the start of TransferSummit/UK, the conference on open innovation and innovation in open source software that is sponsored by OSS Watch. TransferSummit is the perfect opportunity for academia to meet business and vice versa. We hope that everybody will find something valuable to take away from this conference, whether it’s about innovation, collaboration or development on open source software.
The three themed tracks provide a very diverse programme which allows attendees to pick and choose. If you’re coming for inspiration, you will have to make sure not to miss the keynotes by Steven Pemberton and Roland Harwood. And hear about the ‘thoughts from the frontline’ by Simon Phipps.
Are you more interested in open source software foundations? We’ve got speakers from the Mozilla Foundation, GNOME Foundation, LiMo Foundation and The Apache Software Foundation. Not to mention the new CTO of the CodePlex foundation, Stephen Walli, who will be talking about the direction CodePlex is heading.
Perhaps you have a more technical background and are running your own open source software project. In that case you may want to know more about ‘Managing IP’ which will be the topic of OSS Watch’s Rowan Wilson’s talk, and go hear more about project governance by Ross Gardler.
Or are you from a business background and would you like to know more about how to make money out of open source? Then the session on ‘FOSS business models’ by Sirius’s Mark Taylor is for you, and you should hear from Bertrand Delacretaz why his company Day Software open sources most of their code.
And this is only scratching the surface of what the programme at TransferSummit has to offer. There are still a few places available so come down to Oxford on Thursday and Friday.
In case you are not able to come to TransferSummit, make sure you bookmark our live page where you will find two live blogging streams as well as the Twitter feed (hastag #TS10).
Next week sees tha launch of our new conference TransferSummit. Despite it being a new conference and despite it being possibly the worst time to launch such an event we are already looking at making it twice the size next year.
TransferSummit provides a forum for business executives and members of the academic and research community to discuss how they might benefit from one anothers activities. It seems that we’ve hit the mark with this topic, as evidenced by the recent report that UK universities deliver £2.97B in services to business and industry.
TransferSummit is all about connecting our universities to our businesses in order to capitalise on the wealth of knowledge and experience
We are very proud of the programme we have put together, with speakers from all walks of the academic, commercial and not-for-profit sectors. We have talks ranging from first steps towards open innovation in software through to case studies ranging from the niche (such as the University of Nottinghams TexGen project) through the the large scale academic (such as Sakai) to massive cross-sector foundations (such as the GNOME Foundation).
Take a look at the full programme, you are certain to find information of value to you.
We are also proud of the sponsors who have lined up to support the event, again with all sectors represented. The level of support we have gathered is testament to the importance of this event.
Two days, three tracks, a Gala Dinner and a BarCamp… Endless Possibilities!
We still have a very small number of free tickets for the academic community and a few discounted tickets for everyone else, all you need to do to get your discount code is mail us.
This year I’m tasked with being the lead for the BarcampOxford. Given the great success of the previous BarcampApacheOxford and my newbie status this is a little daunting. Fortunately Barcamps have the mentoring sorted and we have a team consisting of the someone local, someone experienced, someone new and everyone else who volunteers to do something. That way the experience gets passed on and we have more great BarCamp events.
Ross assures me that as Barcamps are self organising on the day the key is to make sure folks turn up and the resources are in place to make the day run smoothly. Mind you, there’s plenty to do, and leaving so much to be decided on the day is a little scary. However having been to a few BarCamps and similar events I know they provide attendees with a much more valuable experience than a traditional ‘passive’ conference. However you do need attendees who want to roll up their sleeves and get stuck in. Well at least, attendees who want to discuss topics that matter to them. That’s not often a problem with those with open source or geek leanings, as are our target ‘barcampers’ . The reward is a feeling of something achieved through new connections made, new ideas formed or new projects started.
If you’ve never experienced a BarCamp then I highly recommend you go to one the very first chance you get. Why not join us as a taster? To whet your appetite here’s an introductory email that was sent out recently.
Building on the great success of last year’s BarCampApacheOxford, OSS Watch and Torchbox are again running the popular BarCampOxford unconference at the Oxford University Club on the 26 June. Expect many great conversations, including topics such as open source, open development, open innovation and web 2.0 mashups. Full details are on the BarcampOxford wiki page [1]
If you’re not sure what a BarCamp is, fear not. It’s a friendly, flexible and informal event where everyone who attends has a say in what happens on the day. The idea is to come with a topic you’d like to present, discuss or even hack-on. We figure out exactly what happens in the morning, and then get on with it.
We already have people who like to get together on topics as diverse as; open source, cloud computing, semantic web, mobile tech, agile development, UIX and accessibility, Python, Dojo and Javascript. If something else takes your fancy, then just a look at the wiki [1] and add your interests in the attendees list or come up with an idea on the day.
We’ll have food and drink to keep you energised. This year the TV goes on and club bar opens at 3 for those who just can’t bear to miss the World Cup football. Those who want to carry on a great conversation or hack session can do so in the upstairs spaces.
So why not join us – just add you details to the wiki page [1] or email us [2]
This year the Barcamp follows on from the TransferSummit [3] open innovation conference being held at Keble College, and a number of attendees will stay on for the Barcamp. They will no doubt have a lot to talk about after the Summit which promises to be exceptional given the programme [4]. Note: there are still spaces at the Summit, you can register on the website [3].
1: http://barcamp.org/BarCampOxford
2: info@oss-watch.ac.uk
3: http://www.transfersummit.com
4: http://www.transfersummit.com/programmeWe hope to see you on the 26 June.
Apparently French research is not ‘wired for innovation’. The reason, according to Presans who reports from a recent Lyon round table, is the low levels French public research score on the Technology Readiness scale. Technology Readiness is a model used in the aerospace and defence sectors to evaluate the maturity level of a new technology. According to this model, levels 1-2 correspond to basic research, 3-6 indicate intermediary stages as the project moves from demonstrator to prototype, and 9 is assigned to a technology ready to be released on the market. According to Florin Paun, Deputy Director for Industrial Innovation at ONERA, technologies produced by public research should reach at least level 4 on the Readiness scale in order to attract industry partners, but most French research units, with some notable exceptions, tend to score below this mark. Research and industry do not speak the same language, the author of the post concludes, therefore there is a need for translation and reformulation of the needs of businesses and of the solutions provided by research laboratories.
The lack of a common language for all categories of research stakeholders was also identified in studies of UK research infrastructure, as OSS Watch pointed out. Despite an impressive array of online systems and services aimed at helping researchers carry out their research, these technologies are often employed below their full potential. One way to improve this situation is to take stock of some key lessons from open source development, which include providing an open space for expressing the needs and concerns of researchers, software developers, service providers, and indeed all external partners, including businesses, who may wish to join the community.
OSS Watch conceived TransferSummit precisely to address this lack of mutual understanding between the academic and business research stakeholders interested in open development and open innovation. Two of the academic projects we advised recently have started to benefit from collaborating with non-academic partners. TexGen’s decision to make their research software freely available resulted in attracting supplementary grants and facilitating industry collaboration, while Wookie’s choice to join the Apache Software Foundation’s Incubator attracted interest from both the academic and commercial sectors. Both these and other academic projects will feature at TransferSummit, along with key representatives from open source businesses and software foundations, including in no particular order, Red Hat, Sourcesense, Sirius, WSO2, Indiginox, Day, HP, Amazon, Gnome, Apache, Codeplex, Mozilla, LiMo, Wikimedia, who will discuss the challenges and opportunities associated with academic-industry partnerships.
French research may not be ‘wired for innovation’, but is UK ready to reap the benefits of open innovation emerging from the dialogue of the academic and business sectors? Join us at TransferSummit to find out.
Passport without a visa: open source software licensing and trademarks is an excellent article by Tiki Dare, Legal Director of Sun Microsystems USA, and Harvey Anderson, General Counsel, Mozilla USA. Using clear and accessible language from the start, it sets the scene with some background on open source and a few useful definitions. It then looks more closely at the legal structure around trademarks and their role in open source, touching on issues like licensing, copyright, patents and IP along the way. Theoretical discussion is balanced by a sprinkling of examples, bringing these subjects to life and making for a refreshingly readable article.
Although its focus is the US, many of the principles set out in the article apply equally in Europe. It’s written for the legal fraternity, but will be of interest to anyone wanting an overview of trademarks in FOSS, or simply further insight into the whole thorny area. As a relative newcomer to open source, I found it very useful having so much information in one place. Great value for half-an-hour’s reading!
OSS Watch discusses some of these subjects in documents including Open source development – an introduction to ownership and licensing issues and Free and open source software and your patents. Some will also be covered at our forthcoming open source event, TransferSummit.
This guest post was written by Alan Bell.
Picture the scene: a sunny morning in a peaceful Belgian forest, rabbits playing on the grass, birds in the trees full of the joys of spring. This was the setting for the Ubuntu Developer Summit for the ‘Maverick Meerkat’ release. Three hundred or so people were assembled for a week of decision making sessions shaping the next version of Ubuntu. There were Canonical employees (Canonical is the company that produces Ubuntu), delegates from other companies and projects and also a bunch of assorted geeks from the community who were sponsored to attend. I was very pleased to be one of these.
The proceedings were opened by Mark Shuttleworth (the project’s self-appointed benevolent dictator for life, or sabdfl as he is known online), who talked about Unity, the new light version of Ubuntu that will be pre-installed as a fast-booting, touch-optimised desktop for netbooks and tablet computers. Mark went on to talk about the release of the next version, which was expected at the end of October this year (hence the 10.10 version number). He then visibly shocked the release team by announcing he wanted the release date to be 10/10/10, partly as a tribute to The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy – 101010 in binary is 42 in decimal!
The summit itself was unlike anything else I have ever attended. I will attempt to describe how it works. Firstly, it isn’t a conference or tradeshow and there are no sales pitches. It is a series of working meetings, lots of them. The schedule is published online at http://summit.ubuntu.com/uds-m and for each day you can see what meetings are going on in the 18 rooms available. The schedule is planned in advance, but it isn’t set in stone; sessions are added, removed and rescheduled throughout the week. This sounds a bit chaotic, but it seems to work. The rooms are laid out with microphones in the centre, which record the session and stream live to the internet. Those who want to actively participate in the session sit in the middle; those mainly there to listen and learn sit further back.
On the first day, I ended up running a session as one of my blueprints got scheduled. This was on the topic of the Alfresco document-management system and the future plans for it in Ubuntu. I was a bit unsure how the session would go as I was arriving at it with nothing but open questions; however, to my astonishment, all the right people turned up and provided the answers! We now have a solid set of work items to process in order to get Alfresco and Ubuntu working well together.
I attended several of the sessions on accessibility. Ubuntu was one of the most accessible Linux distributions a few years ago, but has not moved on in this area as much as might be expected. The accessibility team is now being revitalised with new leadership and new projects to work on. One new initiative is to create a set of design personas, well-documented fictional characters who use accessibility software and hardware to operate their computer. These will be used for encouraging application developers to consider the needs of all their end-users and to educate them on the best practices for designing accessible applications. I am also going to be looking at ways to use accessibility software to improve the productivity of currently able-bodied people – the more people using these tools, the more potential contributors there are. Perhaps using text-to-speech for instant messaging or microblogging updates would be a less distracting means of delivering this information, or maybe improving the navigation of the screen using the keyboard would give a productivity boost.
As well as technical sessions, there was a track based on the development of the community, which is a critical part of any open source endeavour. Ubuntu has a large and growing global community and it is fascinating to see how the dynamics of the community change as it grows. As part of the community track, I made some suggestions on how to improve collaboration between local user groups and small businesses when running promotional events and I will be continuing a project to improve the management and production of minutes for the many online meetings. The growth of Ubuntu in the education sector was also discussed, with several meetings on the Edubuntu project, including a discussion of a collection of applications aimed at higher level education.
It was an inspirational, exciting, friendly and exhausting week. Can’t wait for the next one.
The 300+ attendees of the Ubuntu Developer Summit
